Credit: Behrouz Mehri / AFP

France/Syria: Former Lafarge CEO Bruno Lafont and former deputy managing director Christian Herrault, who have been imprisoned in Paris since mid-April 2026, due to charges of financing terrorism in Syria, will be released from prison today, 27 May 2026, under ‘judicial supervision.’ Both of the men requested appeal, which is reportedly expected in a few months, according to local press. They will have spent six weeks in prison.

On 13 April 2026, the Paris Criminal Court sentenced Lafont to six years and Herrault to five, with immediate detention orders issued. On 19 May 2026, Lafont and Herrault requested their release pending a new trial.

The appeals court ruled that pre-trial detention was ‘not the essential means’ of ensuring the two men's appearance in court, and took into account the ‘shock of imprisonment’ they had reportedly suffered. As part of their judicial supervision, the court prohibited them from leaving French territory and set bail of €100,000 for Bruno Lafont and €90,000 for Christian Herrault, to be paid by 2 July 2026. The court did not forbid them from contacting each other, as requested by the public prosecutor's office, even though the two men were incarcerated in the same cell at La Santé prison. They should be released from prison by the end of 27 May 2026. Bruno Lafont's lawyer, Jacqueline Laffont, told local press that she was ‘relieved’ and ‘especially reassured when magistrates, as is the case today, apply the law.’

Bruno Lafont and Christian Herrault are among the nine defendants found guilty by the criminal court of having paid, via the Syrian subsidiary Lafarge Cement Syria, nearly €5.6m to armed jihadist groups in 2013 and 2014 in order to maintain the activity of a cement plant in Jalabiya, northern Syria. As a legal entity, Lafarge was fined the maximum amount of €1.1m, and ordered to pay jointly with four of its former executives a customs fine of €4.57m for violating international financial sanctions. All have appealed their convictions and will be retried in the coming months.

Thailand: Thai Cement Manufacturers Association (TCMA) has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Chulalongkorn University to advance a strategic collaboration, with support from international partners. The partnership aims to develop and pilot carbon capture technologies in the Saraburi Sandbox project, paving the way for industrial-scale deployment and future policy development. Surachai Nimla-or, chair of TCMA, said that the collaboration reflects the proactive role of the industrial sector in advancing the country's climate commitments through a public–private partnership (PPP) model. The initiative brings together industry, academia, government and international partners, including Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC), the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), and the Global Cement and Concrete Association (GCCA), to accelerate the transition toward a low-carbon cement industry in line with the Thailand 2050 Net Zero Cement and Concrete Roadmap.

Chana Poomee, honorary chair of TCMA and president of ASEAN Federation of Cement Manufacturers (AFCM), said “By integrating cross-sector collaboration through PPP, linking policy, technology, knowledge and workforce development to real-world implementation, this initiative will establish the foundation of a low-carbon industrial ecosystem and evolve into a system-level model that can be scaled across the region."

Spain: Fusion Fuel Green has announced that its subsidiary Bright Hydrogen Solutions will provide construction and operation services for a 2MW ‘green’ hydrogen production facility at a cement plant in Buñol, Spain. The facility will be built for Çimsa Cementos España under a construction agreement with Bright Hydrogen Solutions’ Spanish branch. The project aims to integrate hydrogen as an alternative fuel source in the cement production process, according to a press release statement.

Construction services will be provided by Bright Hydrogen Solutions’ Spanish-registered branch. Supply, engineering and operation services will be delivered under separate agreements involving a project company managed by Bright Hydrogen. The project will utilise Bright Hydrogen Solutions’ agency agreement with Sungrow Hydrogen, a hydrogen equipment supplier.

Frederico Figueira de Chaves, CEO of Fusion Fuel and Bright Hydrogen Solutions, said "This project represents the type of industrial application the hydrogen sector increasingly needs with real industrial demand, long-term commercial structures and integration into hard-to-abate industrial operations."

UK: Industrial decarbonisation company Carbon Re has announced a change in its company name to Gigaton. It said that the rebranding reflected the product it believed ‘would define the next era of industrial control.’ It said that Gigaton is a ‘self-learning control system’, that sits at the heart of plant operations, applying AI to both the control and optimisation layers to directly control actuators, explain its actions to the operator, and learn as the plant conditions change. Regarding the reason for the change to Gigaton, it said that a gigatonne is the unit climate scientists use when they talk about the scale of the change needed to affect climate change, and that the company name represents its understanding of the scale needed to achieve its mission.